Known blood treatment systems such as e.g. dialysis apparatus are complex both in configuration and handling because they offer numerous options with regard to their setting and their program sequence. Thus, the operating personnel, hereunder briefly referred to as “users”, has to be specifically trained. The type of treatment which can be performed by a blood treatment apparatus comprises diverse phases. These include e.g. the preparation of the apparatus; the connecting of the patient to the apparatus, e.g. establishing a connection between the patient and the tube system of the apparatus; the actual therapy, e.g. the purification of the blood; and the after-treatment concluding the therapy, e.g. by administering specific medicants.
In the use of blood treatment apparatus, two different strategies exist: The first strategy consists in that the user will select the respective next step of the treatment process on the apparatus on the basis of his or her experiences. According to the second strategy, an automatic program sequence is provided wherein the blood treatment apparatus will detect the current state of a program sequence by means of sensors and after termination of a treatment step will positively carry out the next program step.
DE 103 23 843 A1 describes a concept wherein various temporal modes of a blood treatment are visually represented on a touch screen, allowing the user to perform a selection among them. The respective temporal mode currently in operation is identified by a control device and specifically represented on the touch screen. The end of a temporal mode will be detected in order to automatically initiate the start of the subsequent temporal mode. In this concept, the modes are processed according to a fixed temporal order. As soon as the sensors detect a given mode, an automatic transition to the next mode will take place. What is realized in this concept is a rigid sequence of functions, allowing no possibility to the user to change the pre-stored program. This shortcoming causes a massive restriction of flexibility since the dialysis apparatus will automatically and rigidly follow a presumably ideal sequence. Possible exceptional situations as they may occur ever again in various patients, cannot be considered. The fixed program sequence will confine the range of user interventions within the limits of a rigid system.
A fixedly predetermined sequence of the individual steps entails a massive restriction of flexibility. Since the blood treatment apparatus rigidly operates according to a presumably ideal sequence which is carried out automatically, possible special situations as may occur in various patients, or typical processes inherent in the culture of a given country and having their origin in the country's local customs or legal requirements, or also hospital-specific routines, can thus be considered only insufficiently.
To guarantee a more-individual and nonetheless automated concept of the functional process of the apparatus, some manufacturers have adopted an approach to the effect that, in some processes, a selection among various options is allowed. Thus, for instance, it can be decided whether, at the end of the therapy, the dialyzer is to be evacuated immediately and automatically or whether the evacuation is to start only upon manual activation via a special input key. Similar choices can be made with respect to the evacuating of the bicarbonate cartridge or an optional subsequent disinfection.
For safety reasons, the possible selection and respectively activation of the functionality can be performed only by a service technician or through input via menus requiring separate access. Disadvantageously, in this solution, the individual selection of the behavior during specific steps will be unintelligible to the health-care personnel, entailing the loss of a comprehensive survey on the overall process. Further, in the use of this apparatus, a mutual coordination between the nurse, the physician and the technician must be carried out. A process which has been modified at individual points will then be unfit for individual adaptation to respective days, patients and consumption materials and will have been installed only on the blood treatment apparatus configured for such a process.
In one aspect, the present invention provides a blood treatment system which makes it possible for the user to adapt the whole treatment process to special requirements, such as e.g. the treatment standard of a dialysis center, the available consumption material or the demands posed by the patient. The possibility for the user to survey the whole functional process of the treatment is to be maintained, and it is to be reliably precluded that settings could be performed which would be nonsensical or even dangerous to the patient. In another aspect, the invention provides a blood treatment system wherein the designing of the whole functional process from switch-on of the apparatus up to the disinfecting of the tube system and the apparatus components can be performed on the blood treatment system itself and/or on a separate computer.
The blood treatment system of the present invention includes a program library is provided which includes various functional processes in the form of data sets for the operation of the blood treatment apparatus, and that respectively one data set can be selected to be activated for a treatment process.